A near-complete skeleton of a mammoth which lived between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago has been found near Paris, the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research said Tuesday.

The remains were discovered at Changis-sur-Marne, northeast of Paris. They included a femur, a complete pelvis, jawbones and four connected vertebrae.

House finches avoid sick members of their own species, scientists said Wednesday in a finding that could be useful for tracking the spread of diseases like bird flu that also affects humans.

Laboratory tests showed that the house finch, a particularly social North American species, was able to tell the difference between sick and healthy fellow birds and tended to avoid those that were unwell.

The spade-toothed beaked whale is so rare that nobody has seen one alive, but scientists have proof the species still exists.

Two skeletons were identified as belonging to the species after a 17-foot whale and her calf beached themselves in New Zealand in 2010. Scientists hope the discovery will provide insights into the species and into ocean ecosystems.

Greek, British and Israeli scientists on Monday received the European Commission's first Marie Curie prizes for scientific research, a statement said.

In the category of "promising research talent", Gkikas Magiorkinis of Greece was rewarded for his work on tracing how the Hepatitis C virus has spread around the world.

Anti-whaling activists began their annual campaign against Japanese whalers Monday with the Sea Shepherd's flagship, the Steve Irwin, leaving its Melbourne dock to pursue the harpoonists.

The group's ninth campaign, named Operation Zero Tolerance, is its largest against Japan's whale hunt and involves four ships, a helicopter, three drones and more than 100 crew members.

Accompanied by a fleet of astronauts spanning NASA's entire existence, Atlantis made a slow, solemn journey to retirement Friday, the last space shuttle to orbit the world and the last to leave NASA's nest.

Atlantis reached its new home at the Kennedy Space Center's main tourist stop close to sundown, after a one-way road trip that spanned nearly 12 hours.

Brazil's Salto Morato Nature Preserve is a haven for scientists studying the dwindling Atlantic rainforest, an area less renowned than the Amazon forest but just as biologically diverse and equally threatened by human encroachment.

The preserve in Guaraquecaba, in the southeastern state of Parana, covers a corner of what was once a huge littoral rainforest known as the Mata Atlantica.

Two spacewalking astronauts worked on a leaky radiator system outside the International Space Station on Thursday, just hours after barely dodging a menacing piece of orbiting junk.

NASA ordered the space station to change position Wednesday evening to avoid a fragment from a communication satellite that was destroyed in a high-speed collision three years ago.

Another messy — and wintry — storm may cause post-Election Day problems for an already weather-weary East Coast, forecasters say.

But meteorologists add that it's six days out, so that's rather early to get too worried. The forecast could change before it hits late next week.

On a trek across this Atlantic rainforest reserve in southern Brazil, biologist Michel Garey recalled how on his birthday in 2007 he chanced upon what turned out to be a new species of tiny, three-fingered frogs.

"I was doing research with two friends on a hilltop in the reserve and I stumbled into this unusual frog with only three fingers," he told a small group of reporters this week on a tour of Salto Morato, a nature preserve owned by Brazil's leading cosmetic firm Boticario.